And now for the bad news ... this blog's days are numbered. I will never do NaBloPoMo again here, and I will most likely be deleting the whole of Spankcracker in the fairly near future.

Isabel is getting older and I feel that having all this on the internet isn't very fair on her. It was never written with the intention that she should ever read it, but that day is getting closer all the time. If I'm going to continue writing, it will be with anonymity. This probably means I will have even fewer readers than I do now, but oh well! If you would like my new URL, you'd best comment or send me an email.

Advancing years

November 29, 2011

Two things happened this week that made me feel old.

1. I was in the gym last night and caught the tail end of a conversation between two girls in their early twenties. One was moaning about her housemate. The other one said, "Is she old?" and the first one said, "Yeah, thirty or something?" and the other one said, "Eww... gross".

2. On my way home from Cubs I was talking to our 18-year-old leader and his 16-year-old girlfriend about music for the Cubs party next week. He said, "I can bring along one of the old Now albums, I've got Now 75". I commented that I wasn't sure what number they were up to and he said, "Now 79, Now 80?"

I said, "Do you want to know what number Now album I remember listening to when I was a teenager?" They looked at me with interest. "Now 7," I replied. They looked absolutely gobsmacked. I added hurriedly, "I was quite young! Probably only about 12! I don't remember the first Now album being released!" but it was too late, the damage was done. They think I'm ancient.

17 gym sessions in 30 days - a new record?!

November 28, 2011

Lately I've been working really hard to get super-turbo-fit before Christmas. My gym program is so brutal that smoking isn't really an option at the moment. It's not even crossed my mind.

Here's a handy calendar:

Tonight I'm going to my Monday night session at the gym. It's called Party Fit and it involves circuit training around ten stations - lunges, squats, weights, press-ups and various other forms of torture with only 15 seconds to catch your breath inbetween. Then you get a couple of minutes to recover before doing it all again. Then at the end you get to do ten minutes of merciless sit-ups and other abdominals. I saw the instructor on Saturday and she said this week would be harder than last week...

Last night I had a crap night's sleep, I've been at work all day and I've just got back from walking the dog - truthfully I'd prefer my bed to the gym.

Yellow Mini

November 27, 2011

The game "Yellow Car" was first introduced to us by one of Isabel's friends. His knowledge of the exact rules was a bit woolly but basically it's a counting game in which you get one point for seeing a yellow car, one point for a Mini and one point for a convertible. And a million points for a car with jigsaw puzzle pieces on it.

I soon realised this was a totally unfair points system, as Minis are quite common and yellow cars are (relatively) rare. So I re-designed the scoring system as follows:

Mini = 1 point

Mini convertible = 3

Yellow car = 5 points

Yellow Mini = 20 points

Yellow Mini convertible = 50 points

I later added an extra rule where you also got 5 points for a pink or orange car.

Other rules:

Vans/lorries/motorbikes/emergency services vehicles do not count. Vehicles must be at least 50% yellow to qualify. If anybody gets out of the car for any reason, the game is over and scores reset. Nobody scores if there's a tie. Vehicles hidden behind hedges or down side roads don't count - they must be in clear view of all occupants of the car. You can't opt out of playing, even if you say you have. And if anyone ever spots a car/van/lorry/anything with jigsaw puzzle pieces on it, they score a million points, become the ultimate winner and the game ends forever.

Isabel, Mattgreen and I played this game with ferocious competitiveness for about ten months. Every time we got in the car, it shook with the cries of "YELLOW CAR"! It became so ingrained to look out for yellow cars that Mattgreen and I couldn't help noticing them even when we were alone in the car. We never saw a jigsaw puzzle piece van, despite playing the game for literally thousands of miles.

Then my brother came to visit. We played the game with him. The next day he went to Leeds with a mate of his and texted me from the motorway. Yep:

Isabel declared that this did indeed count and the game is now over. Several months later and I'm still noticing yellow Minis....